Chapter 7

It wasn't the pretty face that sold me on this mutant academy insanity. It was the mystery inherent in the mere existence of an elf, hinting at so much more that was available there, knowledge that I would likely find accessible to me nowhere else, experience that I could garner and challenges to surmount that Whateley was there for. As well, if I wanted minions, allies, people worth talking to who were my age - there was no other place better suited.

I was still scared spitless of crazy Bricks and Blasters, Diedrick's-toucher devisors and unsupervised demon-summoners, but if the school had survived almost fifty years of mutants, they probably had means of handling one and all, while keeping people mostly whole.

I started filling in the paperwork, shaking my head at the insanity of some of the boxes. Really, anti-matter? Time travel? Was this ... oh, right. One way of weeding out the cranks.

There was one bright spot here, I mused as I speeded up the writing process, earning a frown from mom as the pen literally flew across the pages. No more regular high school, which significantly reduced the chances for negative exposure, to well below a single percentage point, at least outside of Whateley. I had a few difficult moments when putting the Xs on the boxes, choosing just what to reveal, finally deciding that the only thing I wanted to keep secret was my talent for reading the odds. The thought of what people would do to get their hands on someone with a reliable ability to compute the chances of success for any and every action and any conceivable permutations thereof scared the shit out of me.

For the belligerent students at Whateley, I'd have time to prepare. For the might of the whole world, preparation would be of no use. I had a whole four months to prep up for the coming Whateley school year, which should be more than enough time. Done with the forms, I started out on an organized to do list, or at least I tried. As usual, as soon as I started with item one, I got distracted and began working. Number one was the money issue and keeping it safe from scrutiny, which was actually a rather simple matter. Any sort of direct contact, be it verbal, written or electronic, was out of the question. My parents would handle everything, with a couple of private offshore accounts they didn't need to know about. The problem was getting the information to them in a timely and discreet manner. I settled on a coded message on Craigslist, with an offline laptop I'd program to decrypt it, an effective one time pad system. That was the fast and easy part. The distraction was the sudden need to study cryptography, which I was still doing when mom kicked my foot.

"Ow! Hey, why did you do that?" I whined.

"You were totally spaced out," she frowned at me, "you didn't hear me shouting at you from a foot away. Is it always going to be like this?"

"Ahem, well," I blushed. "I guess, probably. When I'm concentrating, I'm going at mach twenty, I don't notice the little things. Like hunger, thirst, fatigue, noisy people, deadlines, you know..." I tried a weak grin. Judging by her thunderous expression, my attempt at humor had once again failed miserably. This was just totally unfair. I could probably build a spaceship, but couldn't even crack so much as a single amusing joke. I briefly considered acting classes at school, but making an ass out myself wasn't an attractive notion. Perhaps in a couple of centuries, I'd crack the humor code. Which got me consider aging factors, regeneration and immortality, which in turn earned me another kick.